I am encouraged by the number of Rudd-dissenting comments on this opinion peice at the OZ. It appears to me that alot of people understand the nature of censorship and are beginning to smell a Chinese-style communist rat in Rudd's approach to creating a 'cleen feed'.
Not so hip now are you, censorboy?
Gen-Y are well abreast of issues like this. The web is the only place where alot of young people feel free. That might sound wanky but I know it's true dispite being gen-X. It's the only place where I get to mouth off like this for a start.
The idea of all the sites I visit and contribute to being screened for so-called undesirable content unsettles me somewhat. Is child-porn now, which is bad for sure - illegal acts get commited in creating those sites, but should we not crack down in those crimes, or seek out the site-creators, rather than put the onus on the web-providors to filter every user's traffic.
How long is it before Rudd starts filtering political content? They will start with obvious targets like Islamist terrror sites and then extend it to any right-wing site at home they label 'extermist'. These wont just be neo-Nazi sites. You dont have to go too far right to offend a leftie. Howard was an 'economic extremist' according to Rudd. I'm sure there are loads of people in the ALP who would like to censor conservatives material on the web, or at least make the users feel watched.
But Rudd probably wont get that far because he'll fall at the first hurdle. His political skill has been hugely overrated. .
How NOT to play politics 101:
Rudd, after encouraging everyone to think that internet speed is the government's responsibility now proposes to make it slower.
All this filtering will slow stuff down enormously. Nobody stands between a kid and his fast internet. Rudd himself was the man who replace schooling with 'surfing' by furnishing every kid with a computer in the classroom. You'd think he understood how important it was to get those YouTube vids downloaded doublequick.
Apparently not.
What's the bet Rudd just me-toos Howard's parental supervision software download policy.
